Reported questions

 

Reported questions are used to describe questions that someone has asked.

Direct questions and reported questions use different word orders.

 

1 Closed questions

 

You go to a job interview and the interviewer asks you:

• Are you friendly and outgoing?
• Have you done this kind of work before?

 

Later, you want to tell a friend what the interviewer asked you. You have two options:

 

a) You can repeat her words:

• She asked me, ‘Are you friendly and outgoing?’
• She asked me, ‘Have you done this type of work before?’

 

These are direct questions.

 

b) You can also use reported questions.

 

If the answer to a question in direct speech is ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ ‘if’ or ‘whether’ is used to report the question. ‘Whether’ is more formal than ‘if.’

• She asked me if I was friendly and outgoing.
• She asked me if I had done this type of work before.

 

Reported questions with ‘if’ and ‘whether’ leave out the auxiliary verb ‘do.’

• Do you want me to stay for dinner? – Ian asked me if we wanted to stay for dinner.

 

Changing direct questions to reported questions

 

The change of pronoun and tense are similar to reported statements.

 

In addition:

a) the word order changes

b) we add ‘if’ or ‘whether’ with ‘yes’ / ‘no’ questions

 

• Interviewer: ‘Can you start tomorrow?’ – She asked me if I could start the next day.

 

2 ‘Do’, ‘does’ and ‘did’

 

These auxiliary verbs are not used in reported questions. The past form of the verb is usually used.

• Interviewer: ‘Do you like working as part of a team?’ – She asked me if I liked working as part of a team.

 

3 Choice questions

 

‘If’ or ‘whether’ can also be used to report questions that use “or” in direct speech.

• Interviewer: ‘Do you want to work in the morning or in the afternoon?’ – She asked me if I wanted to work in the morning or the afternoon.

 

4 Open questions

 

Direct open questions are reported by swapping the order of the subject and the verb.

• What are your hobbies?
• Where do you live?
• Why did you apply for this position?
• What hours can you work?

 

The subject comes before the verb in reported questions.

• She asked me what my hobbies were.
• She asked me where I lived.

 

The tense in reported questions usually moves one tense back from the tense in direct questions.

• She asked me why I had applied for the position.
• She asked me what hours I could work.